As the United States rolls out President Donald Trump’s new curbs on travellers from seven mostly-Muslim countries, would-be migrants, protesters and human rights activists have decried the visa rule changes as a form of collective punishment.

But, as with any policy, there are winners as well as losers. As the dust settles, members of persecuted religious minorities in the Middle East – such as Chaldeans, Yazidis and Baha’is – see Trump’s executive order as a way of getting coveted spots at the front of the refugee line.

“The Trump administration seems like a good team to work with,” Bishop Sarhad Jammo, a Chaldean Catholic leader originally from Baghdad, Iraq, who now lives in San Diego, California, told Middle East Eye.

On the slopes of a low mountain, a chilly breeze blows up from the Nineveh plain and through the spires of the Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac churches in the village of al-Qosh. The peace amid the stone and concrete homes of al-Qosh contrasts starkly with the checkpoint just outside the town, manned by gruff peshmerga soldiers of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). It belies the war only 25 miles south, where Iraqi security forces and militias are fighting the Islamic State (IS) to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/02/donald-trump-visa-ban-iraq-minorities.html

Dutch companies combine to fight far-right 'populism' before election

Major Dutch corporations including Shell, Unilever, Philips and dairy produce giant FrieslandCampina have joined forces in a PR campaign to showcase national talents in a bid to roll back gloom and populism, Dutch media reported on Saturday.

Erstellt: 15.02.17, 22:36 Betreff: Fake news: 'Mass sexual assault' by refugees at New Year in Germanydruckenweiterempfehlen

Reports of a mass sexual assault by refugees in Frankfurt on New Years Eve were fabricated according to German police.

The right-wing newspaper Bild reported last week that 900 drunk refugees had been involved in the mass sex attack and quoted a number of witnesses and victims' testimony.

“I can be happy that I wore sheer tights. They [the migrants] grabbed me under the skirt, between my legs, my breasts, everywhere," one alleged victim, Irina, was quoted as saying.READ: Baked swans, drowning refugees and other media myths

Another witness, a local pub owner, said that his pub had been "full with a group of around 50 Arabs."

"They did not speak German, drank our guests’ drink and danced towards them. The women asked me for help because they were being attacked. The mood changed completely.”

Refugee children and women making the dangerous journey to Europe to flee poverty and conflicts in Africa are being beaten, raped and starved in “living hellholes” in Libya, the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, has said.

While European leaders woo and praise Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for generously hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, none of them mentions a discordant fact: more than 400,000 of his Kurdish fellow-citizens, who were displaced by the war in south-east Turkey last year, have received no government aid and still cannot return home, according to aid groups.http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkeys-own-refugees-kurds-turn-europe-help-1255366989